


In Which Buffy Totally Does Not Wait For Spike For Sixty-Two Days

by coalitiongirl



Category: Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Buffy the Vampire Slayer (Comic)
Genre: F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-11-25
Updated: 2011-11-25
Packaged: 2017-10-26 12:45:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/283291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/coalitiongirl/pseuds/coalitiongirl
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Buffy doesn't wait for Spike. Nope. She practically doesn't even remember that he exists. *nods*</p>
            </blockquote>





	In Which Buffy Totally Does Not Wait For Spike For Sixty-Two Days

So for a while she thinks that she imagined him.

Admittedly, she can’t explain how else they would have emerged victorious without him, but it’s been nearly two months since the Day That Changed Everything, and no one has mentioned him since. She even lurks near Andrew for a couple of days, waiting for him to bring up the other vampire’s involvement in the events of Twilight, but Andrew’s too busy piecing together the remains of the Watchers’ legacy with Faith and Willow to chat much, not even about his favorite topic.

It’s been two months, and she’s certain that he was just a fantasy, some sort of coping mechanism that her brain had conjured after the madness with Angel to represent their victory (which was won at a terrible price, and Spike wasn’t there for that, was he, already thrown out into the sunshine?). And that makes more sense than an alien bug ship, anyway, and the abrupt return of an old lover for brief hours before he’s gone again. Right?

She refuses to sit outside on the fire escape at night anymore, watching the sky because “it’s relaxing,” (and she’s like an old war wife, waiting by the balcony for her husband to return- but she doesn’t think about that much because this is Spike and he’s  _so_  not her husband or her anything at all and she’ll be damned if she lets him be the hero of the piece alone) and secretly scanning the darkness for the silhouette of that ship of his. She hadn’t gotten a good view of it in the first place (well, not the outside, but Spike had taken her on the grand tour while they’d been flying to Sunnydale, proud as though he’d built it himself), but she thinks it kind of looks like a big fish, lower jaw outthrust grumpily. Maybe a blimp.

Not that she thinks about it anymore. No, now she goes out onto the fire escape to get some privacy and pointedly think about anything  _but_  Spike, who was never really there to begin with. (Fish-ship? Full of giant bugs? She’d been so desperate for a shower after leaving Twilight that she’d have hallucinated anything at that point.) And if her eyes occasionally roam across the pollution-greyed skies, well, that’s totally natural. There are…stars, and clouds, and lots to see up there that has nothing to do with irritating vampires.

And when the day comes that she sees a dark bulgy thing dropping to the ground not five minutes away, graceless and obvious (and is he even  _trying_  to be subtle, or is this a brainless gimmick to wind up on Harmony’s talk show as the Amazing Flying Vampire?), she absolutely does  _not_  run to greet it. Or check her hair once before she leaves and decide that it’s too frizzy not to put a hat over it, or change out of her sweats in a matter of seconds and steal Dawn’s new jacket (the cute one, the one that makes her look ten pounds slimmer but not on top) on her way out. Nope. And if she does do all those things, it’s because she’s just getting ready for a quick patrol, nothing else. She always dresses like this for patrol. And why is she worrying about him anyway, when she’s probably just racing out of the apartment complex toward the water to look at some new advertising stunt? It’s stupid, and ridiculous-

-And it’s him, standing silhouetted in the doorway of his ship, foisting secondhand smoke on a group of joggers and completely unapologetic. The burns from the sun are gone (he hasn’t changed a bit, and it kind of takes her breath away) and she’s still having so much trouble trying to comprehend that he’s really there that she barely remembers to produce a stake (as though she’d stumbled upon him while patrolling. She’s not going to use it on him, not unless he pisses her off more than usual. Okay, maybe not even then). 

She’s proud of how even her voice is when she demands to know where he’s been. No accusations, no admissions (he leaves her all the time now, to get a soul or harass Angel or chase giant vagina monsters, and she’s used to it, because she forces herself to be), nothing but the question and the teensy bit of annoyance that she can’t quite contain. And he doesn’t respond, not really, but then he steps down from the ship’s hatch and it takes off (Just like that? Just like that.) behind him, leaving him alone on the ground in front of her.

He doesn’t apologize for the months that he’s been missing and she doesn’t let him know that she’s been kind of frantic (because she hasn’t, nope, she’s just been convinced that he’s a mirage and that’s perfectly normal), but when she asks him if he’s home for good, his eyes do a funny little soft thing that she hasn’t seen since Sunnydale (Take One, that is) and he looks away, to the sky, so she can’t meet his eyes when he tosses her a nonchalant retort. 

And she thinks that that might be answer enough.


End file.
